No Bathroom Breaks & Tzav

The hardest time before Passover is the week prior.

It gets more and more complicated the closer you get.

First you have to finish eating any leavened products.

And not make the mistake of buying or making more.

Then it’s, “When will you clean out/burn/vacuum all the hametz (leavened stuff)?”

When do you shop?

When do you cook?

And you can’t taste matzoh until the seder night.

So what about the in-between time?

So much waiting.

This week’s Parsha is about preparing and anointing Aaron and his sons for the priesthood.

The priests are to keep a constant fire burning on the altar, and clean out old ashes regularly.

It ends with the striking commandment for them to remain in the doorway of the Tent of Meeting, that place where God speaks to Moses, for seven days and nights.

וּמִפֶּ֩תַח֩ אֹ֨הֶל מוֹעֵ֜ד לֹ֤א תֵֽצְאוּ֙ שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֔ים עַ֚ד י֣וֹם מְלֹ֔את יְמֵ֖י מִלֻּאֵיכֶ֑ם כִּ֚י שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֔ים יְמַלֵּ֖א אֶת־יֶדְכֶֽם׃

You shall not go outside the entrance of the Tent of Meeting for seven days, until the day that your period of ordination is completed. For your ordination will require seven days. (Lev. 8:33)

As Avivah Zornberg explains in The Hidden Order of Intimacy, the priests must stay in one place, a liminal place.

“To stay is both to rest, to dwell, and to be, in a sense, suspended, held back.”

“During the Passover night, too, the people were under house arrest, girded and booted for the journey, eating the Paschal offering. Suspended between past and future, this was a moment of focused attention, staying in the rich older English sense of the word (holding back, delaying).”

Zornberg speaks of all this against the backdrop of the Golden Calf, as “The Rabbis” do in their midrashim, their special stories, and the inability of the people to wait for Moses to come down from the mountain. It is this quick need to find a God substitute, an idolatrous object, to worship.

They were unable to wait.

Zornberg points to our need to be able “to wait, to remain vigilant, expectant, turned toward the future.”

She explains, “Such waiting is part of [the priests’] initiation rites. It represents faith and the ability to live with the unrealized possibility; it runs counter to the idolatrous posture that can tolerate no delay.”  

As the world faces so much uncertainty, as we anxiously await the news every day, asking, “What will happen? When will it end? How will it end?” we must learn to wait—to remain vigilant, expectant, and turned toward the future.

Passover is a practice in waiting: remaining expectant.

I think we all feel it in our lives every day, in various ways.

We may be getting close, but—seven days is a long time for the priests to stay in the doorway—with no bathroom breaks?

Supposedly after seven days and nights, the priests will be ready to serve.

We aren't crossing the threshold yet into better times. And we don’t know what the future holds.

But we need to move forward and continue to serve.

We can be like the priests in their waiting place, keeping the fire burning within, and cleaning out the old ashes.

As Shefa Gold puts it in her Torah Journeys: “Without the constancy of the fire, all of our sacrifices, our prayer, our holy work would cease.”

And say Amen.